3 ms·

I agree that that makes a lot more sense in a way, but there is another interpretation. Suppose you are omniscient but that you have a terminal illness, and ha

by jsharpe 13y ago

I agree that that makes a lot more sense in a way, but there is another interpretation. Suppose you are omniscient but that you have a terminal illness, and have 256 time units left in your life to give value to your heirs. Due to your illness, you can only communicate by blinking. If you can give one bit of information per time unit by blinking, what is the information you can give your heirs that will maximize their inheritance?

perfmode 13y ago
This is very clever. I love it.
thrill 13y ago
--. . - .- .--- --- -...
jere 13y ago
Brevity is the soul of wit. Omniscient? Well, I'm not very creative, but you should be able to get off at least half a dozen lottery picks in that.
- jsharpe 13y ago
  That's a good point. You'd have to restrict to information available to someone at the current time, and not based on future randomness (like winning lottery numbers). Otherwise, you could make (effectively) unbounded money by just specifying the stock symbol of a company that gains the most in value in the next year.
  - jere 13y ago
    Well, yes. I see your original point... it makes sense if you look at it from a perspective of communicating the information rather than a security perspective, which is what I was focusing on. Of course, that all assumes that the receiver knows a priori they are receiving a key and what the key corresponds to. And assuming you wanted to set something like that up, there are a lot more dense ways to go about it. It reminds me of this: http://killscreendaily.com/articles/articles/we-went-looking-jason-rohrers-lost-board-game-didnt-make-it-very-far/ http://killscreendaily.com/articles/articles/we-went-looking... In other words, bury massive inheritance in the desert. Issue a list of 1,000,000 GPS coordinates. Then you only need 10 bits.

3 ms·

I agree that that makes a lot more sense in a way, but there is another interpretation. Suppose you are omniscient but that you have a terminal illness, and ha

by jsharpe 13y ago

perfmode 13y ago
This is very clever. I love it.
thrill 13y ago
--. . - .- .--- --- -...
jere 13y ago
Brevity is the soul of wit. Omniscient? Well, I'm not very creative, but you should be able to get off at least half a dozen lottery picks in that.
- jsharpe 13y ago
  That's a good point. You'd have to restrict to information available to someone at the current time, and not based on future randomness (like winning lottery numbers). Otherwise, you could make (effectively) unbounded money by just specifying the stock symbol of a company that gains the most in value in the next year.
  - jere 13y ago
    Well, yes. I see your original point... it makes sense if you look at it from a perspective of communicating the information rather than a security perspective, which is what I was focusing on. Of course, that all assumes that the receiver knows a priori they are receiving a key and what the key corresponds to. And assuming you wanted to set something like that up, there are a lot more dense ways to go about it. It reminds me of this: http://killscreendaily.com/articles/articles/we-went-looking-jason-rohrers-lost-board-game-didnt-make-it-very-far/ http://killscreendaily.com/articles/articles/we-went-looking... In other words, bury massive inheritance in the desert. Issue a list of 1,000,000 GPS coordinates. Then you only need 10 bits.